Bramble Tamble

My phone rang Sunday morning while I was in the grocery store looking for cappuccino mix for my wife. It was my dad.

“You up and about?” he asked me.

“Yeah, I’m just at the grocery store.”

“Well, we overlooked something when we had the boy yesterday. His little red jacket is still on the couch in the living room.”

“OK – well, as soon as I take the groceries home,” I said, “I’ll have to go back out anyway. I can just come over and get it, since it’s still supposed to be in the 40s or so when I take him to daycare in the morning, and that’s the only light jacket he’s got that still fits him.”

“Actually, we were on our way over to eat at the Chinese restaurant,” he told me.

“The one here in town?”

“Yeah, that’s the one we prefer anymore. The last time we were at Jumbo Dragon, we were actually pretty disappointed.”

“Ahhhh, I hate to hear that,” I said, making a mental note not to buy any more gift certificates to Jumbo Dragon for Dad’s birthday or anniversary or Christmas.

“So we’ll be over there around quarter till,” he said. “You want to meet us there?”

“I’d love to,” I said. “It may be a few minutes past that, since I’m not quite halfway through the store yet and I’ll have to run home and unload them and then come back.”

“OK – see you then.”

“By the way, Dad – how’s your arm?”

“Oh, it’s fine, fine. Yours?”

“Hurts like a bitch,” I said with a smile in my voice.

The day before, Dad and his wife had spent the day with my son, as they usually do every other Saturday. Because my wife and I had not visited with them since the 4^th of July, we decided to pay them a visit on Saturday afternoon.

We all went for a walk, the whole passel of us – Dad, my stepmom, my wife, my stepsister, her daughter, my son and I. The two kids rode their bikes up the road, while Dad lagged behind us because he took his time getting his basset hound out of his pen and hooking him up to his lead.

(By the way: I’ll go on the record right now with this observation: anyone who thinks that a dog is a great gift for an older, active person is full of shit. There have been several occasions where my stepmom has asked me to try and find someone who’ll take the dog off Dad’s hands, but then Dad feels guilty about getting rid of him and changes his mind.

(Naturally – although my stepmom, stepsister and I pitched in equally on the purchase of the dog – the idea of “dog as gift” was, regrettably, mine. It stemmed from a half-drunk conversation we had the previous Christmas Eve. And, really, a dog would have been a great idea if Dad didn’t do anything. But because of the dog, he really can’t do anything.

(So, I have a hard time sleeping at night sometimes when I think of how I’ve ruined his retirement, or at least the last six years of it.)

We walked about 3/4 of a mile up the road, taking our time so that Dad would eventually catch up with us, then walked back down toward the house. I strolled slowly behind with Dad and the dog while the women and children went on ahead. We stopped off to chat for about 15 minutes with one of his neighbors who just put in a prefab outbuilding the day before, then continued on to the house.

Dad tied the dog up in the front yard, and the kids played in the yard while the adults just sat and commiserated for about a half-hour before my stepsister and her daughter eventually left, so it was just me, my wife, Son, Dad and my stepmom sitting outside. Dad goes into the house, and after about 5 minutes, brings out a couple of baseball gloves and a ball. “Wanna throw the ball for a little bit?” (Me: “Does a bear shit in the woods?” I didn’t say that, though, but wild boars couldn’t have kept me from putting on a glove.)

The ensuing half-hour was the stuff of movies and Mitch Albom books. We tossed the ball back and forth, he recounted how he’d had those gloves for about 20+ years, and we talked about nothing in particular.

And, quite frankly, it was the happiest moment I’ve had with him in a long time. We’ve had good times before, sure - swimming or shooting guns or drinking ourselves silly on beer or his homemade wine or some moonshine that he got from a lady in West Virginia – but this was different. Pitching a baseball back and forth in the yard, and even though our wives and my son were about 30 feet away, it felt like it was just me and him, on a perfect, nondescript summer day in 1987.

Odd, really, how the simple act of throwing and catching a ball brings fathers and sons closer together. And sad how I can’t write about it without sounding like a cliché.

“I really, really loved doing throwing the baseball with you yesterday,” I told him on the phone in the cappuccino aisle.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, me too. Have to do it again sometime.”

“Definitely,” I said.

Even though his words didn’t express it, I would like to think that the day meant as much to him as it did to me.